Günther Love Understands That Sometimes The Package Is The Only Thing That Matters

As someone who actually likes doing things that I can actually do, I’ve always been a little perplexed by people who can’t do things pretending they are. All the same, I was disappointed that it somehow escaped my attention that the Air Guitar World Championship finals took place the other day, and that they crowned the new champion, French native Sylvain “Günther Love” Quimene. To be perfectly honest, although I had heard of air guitar competitions a few years ago, I had no idea just how big they had become. This year’s winner performed before an audience of more than 5,000 people from 20 countries, and has received international press. If you’re kicking yourself for not having your act together yet again this year, don’t (ahem) fret, learn more about the profession by reading Björn Türoque’s (say that out loud) To Air is Human: One Man’s Quest to Become the World’s Greatest Air Guitarist. Then maybe pick up an Air Guitar Pro to practice. And don’t forget to pick up some strings. You might think that being a world class air guitarist is all about dressing up in an outrageous outfit and flailing around the stage like an idiot, but there’s much more to….oh c’mon. Of course that’s what it’s all about. But apparently it’s become a much more well-defined affair. Contestants are judged on – among other things – something called “airness”, which everyone involved seems a little reluctant to define, but which doesn’t seem to require faithfully reproducing the exact gestures of actually playing a guitar. Which for some reason makes me think of Karaoke.

In its original cultural context, Karaoke made sense; in a culture that represses passionate expressions of emotion, it was a vehicle for expressing feeling through singing, no matter how horribly, and receiving a polite and supportive response. “Good” Karaoke originally meant simply that you truly expressed yourself. Of course in America we’ve turned it into an evening of either “listen to how badly I sing isn’t it funny haha” or “Caroline the heavyset but pretty theater class drama queen from high school who got knocked up by Biff the jock at 22 and had no acting career can still sing, see? SEE? L-O-O-OVE ME!” In any case, both air guitar and Karaoke seem to embody a weird psychology in which someone who really can’t do something gets a lot of attention for still not doing it. So why not just study mime? Oh. Everybody hates mimes these days, I forgot. No really. They’re so hated that there’s even a Flash game in which all that happens is that you slap one. How could someone hate a mime? I mean it couldn’t have been something they said, right?

Check out Günther’s Winning Moves:

Günther’s success may have something to do with assembling the right package:

You’ll need one of these to practice: